URUGUAY: An additional US$110m of financing for the Ferrocarril Central project has been secured by PPP concession holder Grupo Vía Central.
On October 9 the consortium of NGE Concessions, Sacyr Concesiones, SACEEM, and BERKES said this would consolidate the financial foundations of the project while reinforcing its commitment to sustainable development.
The project was launched in 2019 to rehabilitate, renew and expand the north-south railway to support the development of a pulp mill 273 km north of Montevideo near Paso de los Toros.
The line was commissioned in December 2023 and formally inaugurated in April this year, and the concession’s 22 year maintenance period has now commenced.
The project has already benefited from three successive financings amounting to US$858m in 2019, US$75m in 2020 and US$250m in 2022.
The fourth complementary financing has been provided by Allianz Capital Partners (US$65m) and CAF Asset Management for the equivalent of US$45m in Indexed Units.
The concessionaire said this demonstrated the ‘attractiveness of the country, the project and its sponsors to institutional investors’.
The financial participants in the transaction were Inter-American Development Bank, CAF Asset Management, Allianz Capital Partners, Andean Development Corp, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp, Intesa Sanpaolo and Global Infrastructure Partners.
The main advisers were Astris Finance (financial), Baker McKenzie and Dentons Jiménez de Aréchaga (sponsor legal advisers), Clifford Chance and Ferrere (lender legal advisers).
